


To all young Stranger Things writers...

by Lasadh



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 10:15:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20619371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasadh/pseuds/Lasadh
Summary: Hi! Are you writing a story set in the 80's? But you don't remember the 80's?I am here to help.





	To all young Stranger Things writers...

To all young Stranger Things writers:

Unless you’re writing a modern AU, you want to set your stories as realistically as possible in mid-80’s Indiana. You don’t want a reader to be yanked out of your kick-ass story by some anachronistic object or turn of phrase. 

Please, therefore, accept this list in the spirit in which it is intended: an attempt by a middle-aged woman to help make your wonderful stories even better. I was born and raised in the Chicago area, right next door to Indiana, and I graduated high school in 1986.

THINGS YOU WOULDN’T FIND IN MID-80’S INDIANA:

• Bottled water. Seriously, bottled water is so ubiquitous today, but back then the idea of PAYING for water when you could just go fill a glass at the tap would have been just crazy.

• Hoodies. We had hooded sweatshirts, of course, but no one called them hoodies before the 90’s.

• Flat screens, plasma screens, or any TV mounted on the wall.

• DVD players. People were still watching VHS tapes. Betamax was still around, but VHS was what most people had. And most VCRs were not programmable. You had to physically push a button to start a recording. I remember putting a 6-hour tape in the machine and hitting record right before I left for school in the morning so that I could get most of General Hospital before the tape ran out.

• Home computers or ANY kind of Internet.

• Car alarms or any kind of key fob that would unlock your car.

• Air bags. They existed but they weren’t standard and they weren’t at all common, except on more expensive cars.

• “OMG,” “BFF,” and any other kind of chat-speak.

• So very many slang terms didn’t exist back then. Chill. Welp. My bad. Oh, snap! Word. Preach! Good talk. As if. Bounce. Cougar. Gangsta. Facepalm. ___ Goals. And a million more. If in doubt, google.

• “Hooking up.” People would “get laid,” but not “hook up.” Hooking up with someone just meant meeting them somewhere.

• Thai food. I mean, it existed, but it was pretty exotic and hard to find in Chicago, so there’s definitely no one eating spring rolls in Hawkins. Basically, the only non-American cuisines that were easy to find outside of big cities were Italian, Chinese, and Mexican.

• Starbucks. Fancy coffee wasn’t a thing. If you bought a cup of coffee to go from a diner or a gas station, it came in a thick Styrofoam cup and probably cost about fifty cents. Your selection was limited to regular or decaf, and the only available additions were cream and sugar.

• Plastic milk jugs. I googled and googled and was unable to find a definitive answer as to when milk (in the US) started being sold in plastic jugs rather than waxed cardboard cartons with a fold-out spout. I saw one source that said the plastic milk jug has been around since the 60’s and another saying that plastic jugs phased out cartons in the 90’s. Since the latter fits my recollection, I’m including it on the list, but feel free to leave a comment if you remember differently. (ETA: Apparently, it all depended on where your mom shopped, I guess? Plastic jugs became the norm in the 90’s sometime, but apparently they were in use long before that. So go ahead and put that gallon jug of milk in Joyce’s grocery cart.)

• Just about any fancy diet that’s popular today. Most people had never heard of veganism. There were no juice cleanses, no keto, no paleo, very few people gave a thought to carbs, and no one had any clue what gluten was. 

• Caller ID or call waiting. When the phone rang, the identity of the caller was a total mystery until you answered. If you tried to call someone who was on the phone already, you got a busy signal. If they weren’t home, you could leave a message on the answering machine. And only really fancy answering machines had the thing where you could call your own number and punch in a code to play your messages over the phone. Most people just had to wait until they got home to find out who’d been trying to get ahold of them all day. (How did we survive?!?)

• The term “product” for hair care stuff. And there wasn’t a whole lot. Hair spray, mousse, or gel was about it, other than shampoo & conditioner. Mousse was really popular, as I recall. 

• Cool Ranch Doritos, peanut butter M&Ms, or caffeine-free Coke. You’re probably safest sticking to the classic, original flavor of any snack or drink. There were a bunch of potato chip flavors, though. Barbecue, sour cream & onion, cheddar cheese, and so on. I remember having salt & vinegar chips once when I was a kid, thinking they were quite exotic. (I can just see all the Brits shaking their heads.) 

• The term “stalker.” (YES, I’M LOOKING AT YOU, DUFFER BROTHERS.) This term entered the mainstream after the murder of a young actress named Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989. It was a huge national story and led to a bunch of new laws. Steve would not have called it stalking when Jonathan took those pictures in Season 1, and Max would have just called Lucas a creep.

• The term “junk” to refer to a guy’s genitals. Dick, balls, nuts, sack, family jewels, gonads… all fine, but “junk” is pretty recent.

• The term “default” or “default setting” to refer to something that’s standard. (AGAIN, I’M LOOKING AT YOU, DUFFER BROTHERS.) The notion of a default setting is a computer thing, so Max (why does she get all the anachronistic dialogue?) would not have talked about something being “Billy’s default.”

• Earbuds. There were just headphones. Either the cheap, lightweight kind with foam-covered earpieces, or the nicer over-the-ear type. Nothing that went into the ear. (ETA: So earbuds existed in the 80’s but they were not common at all. They were often sold with transistor radios, which weren’t very popular. Kids listened to their Walkmans, which often had radio reception as well as tape-playing, and those were usually accompanied by headphones.) And by the way, if you’ve never played music on a cassette tape, you might not realize that you couldn’t just skip to a specific song. That required judicious fast-forwarding or rewinding and the inevitable bad language when you overshot the mark.

• Boxer-briefs. Guys wore either boxers or they wore briefs. 

• Marijuana being called “weed.” That term didn’t become popular until the 90’s. The Hawkins teens would have smoked “pot.”

• Microwbrews or craft beer. And while I’m at it, no one east of the Mississippi was drinking Coors until ‘86. I’m guessing at Hawkins teen parties there was a lot of Schlitz, Budweiser, Pabst, and Old Style.

• Fancy martinis weren’t really a thing yet. The 90’s saw the surge in things like Cosmos and appletinis. If you ordered a cocktail in the 80’s it would be something a little more old-school like a vodka tonic or a screwdriver. The big club drinks were shots with suggestive names like Sex on the Beach, or a Slippery Nipple. And wine coolers were pretty popular, especially amongst young people who hadn’t acquired a taste for beer. (*sheepishly raises hand*) If you’re not familiar, a wine cooler was a combination of wine, fruit juice, and usually some carbonated lemon-lime soda. They were mostly regarded as a “girl’s drink.”

• LGBTQ ISSUES  
o Gay marriage did not exist anywhere in the US. Very few people even talked about it as a realistic possibility. Gay couples could have private commitment ceremonies, but they had no legal standing and weren’t taken seriously by the general public.

o The term “LGBT” didn’t exist until the very late 80’s. Terms like “trans” or “transgender” weren’t widely known. People who had sex-change operations (now known as gender reassignment) were called “transsexual,” and the concept was regarded as pretty freakish by the majority.

o Homophobia was rampant, especially in conservative areas like Indiana, because the AIDS scare was in full bloom. AIDS was thought of by many as either the punishment of God for sin, or just the natural consequence of unnatural behavior, and misinformation was all over the place. People thought you could catch AIDS from a drinking fountain or a toilet seat.

o Homophobia was also pretty casual. People just assumed a disapproval of homosexuality and they were usually right. No one was saying “love is love.”

o Because of the rampant homophobia, it would not have occurred to anyone in Hawkins that you could be openly gay. The idea that you could be out of the closet without serious consequences (getting fired, denied service in restaurants, jumped in random parking lots) was pretty far-fetched. 

o The most “decent” brand of homophobia (which is where I’d imagine someone like Hopper to be) would take the “none of my business” attitude but wouldn’t exactly be comfortable with it. The younger kids would probably be best at accepting it, but there would still be some awkwardness and an adjustment period. 

This is based on my own recollection and I’ve done some internet research where I wasn’t sure of something. Researching made me take a few things off the list. Like juice boxes. I mean, I don’t remember anyone drinking juice boxes in the 80’s but maybe that’s because I was a little too old for them at the time. So if you have something you think needs to be added or removed, leave a comment.   
And keep writing, folks, because I will certainly keep reading!


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